PICO RIVERA – Considerable talent, coupled with an uncommon level of maturity, has helped El Rancho High School running back Marcus Galan receive a football scholarship to the University of Minnesota-Crookston.

Galan visited the school last week and signed his letter of intent during a ceremony on the El Rancho campus Friday morning.

“All the (Crookston) coaches seemed to be really interested in me, and that helped,” Galan said. “They said they wanted to sign two top running backs, and I was one of them.”

El Rancho coach Rick Zepeda, who was instrumental in making the Golden Eagles aware of Galan, said, “He’s a very mature young man. When the games went south, he stepped up to take care of himself, his school and his team.”

At the start of the season, El Rancho’s duo of Galan and Marcus Aldecoa figured to form one of the area’s best one-two tandems at running back.

Aldecoa was injured early, however, and the responsibility for the Dons’ ground game fell heavily on Galan’s shoulders.

“I felt a little more pressure, but I also felt I could handle it. I felt I had the confidence to deal with it,” Galan said as he stood among the crowd of well-wishers that included his parents, Tom and Stephanie Galan, and Pico Rivera Mayor Grace Gallegos.

The 5-foot-6, 165-pound senior finished with 1,038 yards on 168 carries, a 6.2-yard average, and five touchdowns.

He also had 22 receptions for 273 yards and three scores.

“Marcus was mature enough to take over that role (as a team leader) and handled it very well,” Zepeda said. “It also is what will help him succeed going away to (college).”

The Dons’ season didn’t turn out the way their fans expected, but Galan said the team “was much better than the scores (would indicate).”

“We didn’t have a lot of team chemistry and we lost focus at times,” he said. “We were a young team, and we weren’t able to keep teams down when we had leads.”

He admitted to brief periods when it was depressing, “not so much because the team was losing, but how it was losing,” he said.

Despite the team’s 2-8 overall record and 0-5 Del Rio League mark, Galan called it an enjoyable experience.

Minnesota-Crookston, an NCAA Division II school, has an enrollment of a little more than 1,200 students and is a member of the Northern Sun Intercollegiate Conference.

The school is located about 300 miles northeast of Minneapolis/St. Paul and 24 miles east of Grand Forks on the border of North Dakota.